This is both my personal learning project and my contribution in the struggle to confront the ongoing Republican/ libertarian assault on rational science and constructive learning, as manifested in their malicious strategic Attacks on Science ~ A collection of articles, scientific resources, plus my own essays and indepth critique of various presentations from unidirectional-skeptics ~ Hopefully a resource for the busy, yet discerning, student who's concerned about the health of our Earth

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Thursday, March 30, 2017

The Fyfe et al 2016 clarifying letter to US Representative Lamar Smith is well written. There's nothing to complain about and I don't. Still at 1000 word there's only so much it can say, and I'm going to use this opportunity to make my point using the words of other scientists. Remember my beef is about communication, not the science.

I’ve borrowed from about a dozen climate studies, along with some other info and let their quotes speak for themselves. I apologize for some of the hard feeling. I do not apologize pushing for better recognition of our* failures to communicate, how else can we learn, how else can we improve? (slight edit, I realized Josh Willis' quote belongs at the start of this reading, not at the end.)Best Wishes. For the background to this, link here

* Climate science communicators big and little.

“One way to think about it is that global warming continued, but the oceans just juggled a bit of heat around and made the surface seem cooler for a while”Joshua Willis Ph.D. - JPL

The Committee on Science, Space & Technology of the US House of Representatives conducts regular evidence hearings on various science topics. On Wednesday 29th March, there is a hearing on “Climate science: assumptions, policy implications, and the scientific method”. The following letter, summarising the scientific findings of Fyfe et al. (2016) and Karl et al. (2015), has been submitted as evidence to this hearing.

The broader context is that the Committee Chairman, Mr. Lamar Smith, has previously discussed the findings of Fyfe et al. (of which I was a co-author), claiming: “A new peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Nature, confirms the halt in global warming”.

This statement is incorrect, and motivated the clarification on what Fyfe et al. actually says.

Dear Mr. Smith,

We are coauthors of the Fyfe et al. paper published in 2016 in Nature Climate Change [1]. You recently referenced this paper at a Subcommittee hearing on March 16, 2016 [2]. We are writing to clarify what the Fyfe et al. paper actually finds and claims. We also want to ensure that the conclusions of the Fyfe et al. paper are not misconstrued as a criticism of Thomas Karl, of the Karl et al. paper published in Science in 2015 [3], or of the valuable research that Dr. Karl and his team have performed over many years.

Considering what I’ve written about Fyfe et al 2016 and also my dialogue at and Then There's Physics I feel compelled to post the following without further comment, though I will be looking at it in a future post.

The Committee on Science, Space & Technology of the US House of Representatives conducts regular evidence hearings on various science topics. On Wednesday 29th March, there is a hearing on “Climate science: assumptions, policy implications, and the scientific method”. The following letter, summarising the scientific findings of Fyfe et al. (2016) and Karl et al. (2015), has been submitted as evidence to this hearing.

The broader context is that the Committee Chairman, Mr. Lamar Smith, has previously discussed the findings of Fyfe et al. (of which I was a co-author), claiming: “A new peer-reviewed study, published in the journal Nature, confirms the halt in global warming”. This statement is incorrect, and motivated the clarification on what Fyfe et al. actually says.

We are coauthors of the Fyfe et al. paper published in 2016 in Nature Climate Change [1]. You recently referenced this paper at a Subcommittee hearing on March 16, 2016 [2]. We are writing to clarify what the Fyfe et al. paper actually finds and claims. We also want to ensure that the conclusions of the Fyfe et al. paper are not misconstrued as a criticism of Thomas Karl, of the Karl et al. paper published in Science in 2015 [3], or of the valuable research that Dr. Karl and his team have performed over many years.

Thomas Karl is a first-rate climate scientist. He served NOAA with distinction for decades. Dr. Karl and his colleagues at the National Center for Environmental Information (NCEI) developed rigorous scientific methods for estimating global changes in land and ocean surface temperatures. This is a critically important area of climate science.

NCEI made its surface temperature data sets freely available to the climate science community. This helped scientists around the world to conduct research on the size, rate, and causes of long-term temperature change, and helped to improve our knowledge of natural climate variability. NCEI temperature data are also key yardsticks for evaluating the performance of computer models of the climate system.

Science is dynamic, not static. All surface temperature data sets have evolved over time, as scientists found better ways of accounting for the effects of changes in measurement systems, measuring practices, and the geographical coverage of observations. Similar improvements have occurred in measurements of the heat content of the world’s oceans, and in satellite estimates [4,5,6] of temperature change in Earth’s atmosphere. The evolution of observed temperature data sets is a normal, on-going scientific process. It is not evidence of questionable behavior.

In their 2015 Science paper, Karl et al. identified changes in three different aspects of surface temperature measurement systems. These observing system changes must be addressed in order to reliably estimate the true, climate-related temperature signals in the data. After accounting for the evolution of the measuring system, Karl et al. concluded that the rate of surface warming in the first 15 years of the 21st century was “at least as great as (in) the last half of the 20th century”.

Fyfe et al. acknowledged the “high scientific value” of the work performed by Dr. Thomas Karl and his colleagues. We stand by our statement. It is of great benefit to understand how observational temperature data are affected by changing measurement systems. Karl et al. deserve credit for focusing attention on this issue, and for inspiring important research on the further improvement of surface temperature datasets [7].

While Karl et al. focused on developing a better understanding of temperature observations, Fyfe et al. summarized and synthesized scientific understanding of decadal changes in warming arising from natural variability of the climate system. The emphasis in the Fyfe et al. paper was on studying internal variability (caused by phenomena like El Niños, La Niñas [8], and the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation [9-12]) and on assessing the effects of natural external changes in volcanic aerosols [13] and the Sun’s energy output [14].

Fyfe et al. found that the rate of temperature increase in the early 21st century was slower than during the latter part of the 20th century. Reduced warming was apparent in both surface observations and in satellite measurements of the temperature of Earth’s lower atmosphere (the troposphere).

The bottom line is that Karl et al. and Fyfe et al. reached different conclusions regarding the warming rate in the early 21st century.

This was largely due to different justifiable choices the two sets of authors made about the timescales and periods of interest. The Karl et al. finding – that the recent rate of surface warming is larger than in previous data sets – is supported by an independent study of surface temperature measurements [7].

Other sources of information support the Fyfe et al. finding of a reduced rate of surface warming in the early 21st century. These sources include independent satellite estimates of tropospheric temperature change, physical understanding of the waxing and waning of different “modes” of internal variability, and measurements of the changes over time in volcanic aerosols and the Sun.

All of the factors studied by Karl et al. and Fyfe et al. (changing observing systems, internal variability, and natural variations in the Sun and volcanoes) affect temperature records, and affect our interpretation of the size and significance of decade-to-decade changes in warming rate. The scientific challenge is to reliably quantify the contribution of each factor to short-term changes in warming rate [15].

Finally, we would like to emphasize that Karl et al. and Fyfe et al. agree on the most important scientific points. We agree that human influence on climate is real, is large, and is ongoing. We agree that this influence is primarily due to fossil fuel burning, and to the resulting human-caused changes in atmospheric levels of heat-trapping greenhouse gases [16]. We agree that human-caused changes in greenhouse gases should lead – and do lead – to global-scale warming of Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, and land surface [17]. We agree that we have identified large global warming signals in the observed surface temperature changes from the late 19th century to the present [18], in the satellite atmospheric temperature data that have featured prominently in recent Congressional hearings [19,20], and in ocean heat content measurements [21].

And we agree with Karl et al. that on top of the underlying global-scale warming trend over the past 150 years, we should see – and do see – natural, decade-to-decade ups and downs caused by internal variability, volcanic activity, and changes in the Sun’s energy output. These decade-to-decade fluctuations in warming are not a scientific surprise. They have been discussed at length in every national and international assessment of climate science.

Sometimes the “ups” act in the same direction as human influences, leading to accelerated warming. Sometimes the “downs” lead to a short-term decrease in warming. Our disagreement with Karl et al. about the size of the most recent short-term fluctuation does not call into question the reality of long-term human-caused warming.

The co-authors of the Fyfe et al. paper, who are Canadian Government scientists (John Fyfe, Greg Flato, Nathan Gillett & Neil Swart), felt that it would not be appropriate for them to communicate directly to elected officials in the U.S. pursuing an inquiry. However, they did write a supporting note to Ben Santer affirming their scientific support for the statements made in the letter written by himself and the other co-authors of the Fyfe et al. paper.

[16] The basis for our understanding of human-induced changes in climate stretches back to the 1850s, when carbon dioxide was first identified as a greenhouse gas. It is not a new development. Similarly, our observational understanding of large-scale temperature change dates back to the 1930s, when it was first shown that global land areas were warming (see ref. 17).

Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Looks like Bates is on hold for a couple posts so I can look at a discussion at the blog …and Then There's Physics. Though I'm prefacing it with an essay I wrote "Colorado Floods - statistical certainty vs geophysical realities" about the September 2013 televised release of the preliminary report on the torrential rain event that hit central Colorado a few weeks earlier. Given by the Western Water Assessment (WWA) together with Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES).

All in all it was an excellent understandable detailed report, fact after fact after fact. But when reporters asked scientists to tie those facts together, the messaging broke down into babble because the panel members were too ...?... to dare make Thee AGW connection.

I'm prefacing my repost, with the kickoff comment at ATTP. Some commenters are rather critical of what I've done, though some appreciate what I'm trying to convey and agree. My unpolished style has taken a few hits. No doubt I wish I had more time to focus on it, bet I could do much better, bit more schooling would have been lovely, alas that is not my fate, doing the best I can with what I got, I ask the reader's indulgence and focus on the issue being raised.

I agree that the rate of warming, or the distribution between land, sea and air of the energy accumulating from a rising forcing is a matter of scientific interest. How that interest, and research is reported and framed has been shaped by seepage. The result is what can look like reasonable scientific language, but because of a carefully established misleading context that language can be parsed in general terms that confirm the misinformation.

Sunday, March 26, 2017

This is the third installment(paragraph 3)of this citizen's examination of the article at the heart of this season’s faux climate scandal media sensation the John Bates Affair.For some background and introduction link here.I’ve borrowed Bates’ subtitle since I’m exploring his wordsmithing in order to ponder his motivations and it seemed to fit well enough.

Bates writes in ¶3: In the following sections, I provide the details of how Mr. Karl failed to disclose critical informationto NOAA, Science Magazine, and Chairman Smith regarding the datasets used in K15.

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This sounds like Mr. Bates the prosecuting attorney setting up a jury to convict. Critical information like what?

Technical infractions of documenting protocols? Procedures that take years to satisfy and were the source of many contentious meetings between departments and Bates trying to iron out his fastidious (perhaps even obstructionist) red tape with real world needs. Bates does not share that side of this story.

What’s galling with that sentence is that having read through all this a number of times I already know Bates provides nothing of the sort. Not a hint of any slight or infraction against Chairman Smith by Dr. Karl. The NOAA claim perhaps woven between the lines. The Science Magazine claim amounts to nothing more than another creative and hostile insinuation. I can’t help but wonder if this wasn’t Judith’s ghostwriting.

Bates ¶14 ... Did Karl et al. disclose to Science Magazine that they would not be following the NOAA archive policy, would not archive the data, and would only provide access to a non-machine readable version only on an FTP server?

Has Dr. Bates stopped beating his wife? That sort of framing is gratuitous and only good for contriving prejudices.

Saturday, March 25, 2017

This is the second installment (paragraph 2) of this citizen's examination of the article at the heart of this season’s faux climate scandal. For some background link here. I’ve borrowed Bates’ subtitle since I’m exploring his wordsmithing in order to ponder his motivations.

Climate scientists versus climate data

by John Bates, posted on February 4, 2017 | ClimateEtc - J. Curry

“A look behind the curtain at NOAA’s climate data center.”

For perspective, all this hubbub is over the difference between these two lines

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bates writes in ¶2: ‘The most serious example of a climate scientist not archiving or documenting a critical climate dataset was the study of Tom Karl et al. 2015’

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If this is Bates’ “most serious example” - what’s the big deal? If it was a big deal, why wasn’t Dr. Bates duty bound to formally raise concerns while in his position of responsibility at NOAA?

“Bates does not directly challenge the conclusions of Karl's study, and he never formally raised his concerns through internal NOAA mechanisms.” (W. Cornwall, P. Voosen)

Instead Bates retired and only then does he drag his personal dirty laundry over to Judith Curry for her make-over skills. Then he releases his complaint to a public that has no technical understanding of the issues.

That’s not how serious scientists or competent administrators operate. Smells more like vendetta ensnarled by political dirty tricks.

This begs the question, why doesn’t Bates take his own advice?

(Bates) cautioned scientists against advocating policy.

"You really have to provide the most objective view and let the policymakers decide from their role," Bates said. "I'm getting much more wary of scientists growing into too much advocacy. I think there is certainly a role there, and yet people have to really examine themselves for their own bias and be careful about that."(W. Cornwall, P. Voosen)

Friday, March 24, 2017

This is a citizen's examination of the article at the heart of this season’s faux climate scandal. For more background you can start here.

Climate scientists versus climate data

by John Bates, posted on February 4, 2017 | ClimateEtc.- Curry's blog

“A look behind the curtain at NOAA’s climate data center.”

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I’ve borrowed John’s subtitle since I intend to explore his wordsmithing and ponder his motivations.

Bates' beloved Protocol

_________________________________________________

Bates writes in ¶1 “I read with great irony recently that scientists are “frantically copying U.S. Climate data, fearing it might vanish under Trump” (e.g.,Washington Post 13 December 2016)."

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Red flag right out of the gate.

It’s telling that Bates makes light of what the Trump Administration had already done to climate science information. Given such an intro we must consider the possibility John Bates’ is motivated by politics and opportunism rather than any concern over data records.

WASHINGTON — Within moments of the inauguration of President Trump, the official White House website on Friday deleted nearly all mentions of climate change. The one exception: Mr. Trump’s vow to eliminate the Obama administration’s climate change policies, which previously had a prominent and detailed web page on whitehouse.gov.

The purge was not unexpected. It came as part of the full digital turnover of whitehouse.gov, including taking down and archiving all the Obama administration’s personal and policy pages.

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All References to Climate Change Have Been Deleted From the White House Website

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

All of you by virtue of being experts of the highest caliber possess a nuanced understanding light-years beyond ordinary citizens, politicians and business leaders. Belonging within that rarified world you risk being out of touch with how non-scientists, particularly those with hostile agendas, read your papers. To us nonscientists Fyfe et al. 2016 offered up a muddled Rorschach test rather than the promised clarifications.

Please give this summary of my previous effort a moment to see if something resonates, or not. I don’t need a response, all I'm hoping is for you to take it seriously, if only for a moment.

¶10 Understanding of the recent slowdown also built upon prior research into the causes of the so-called big hiatus from the 1950s to the 1970s. During this period, increased cooling from anthropogenic sulfate aerosols roughly offset the warming from increasing GHGs (which were markedly lower than today). This offsetting contributed to an approximately constant global mean surface temperature (GMST). Ice-core sulfate data from Greenland support this interpretation of GMST behaviour in the 1950s to 1970s, and provide compelling evidence of large temporal increases in atmospheric loadings of anthropogenic sulfate aerosols. The IPO was another contributory factor to the big hiatus13.

________________________________

Clarify the process so people can 'appreciate' what you're talking about.

Sulfate aerosols reflected the sun’s energy back into space

before it had the opportunity to be converted into the infrared energy that fuels our climate system. Thus a cooling trend in the GMST and the global system.

¶11 Research motivated by the warming slowdown has also led to a fuller understanding of ocean heat uptake.… In summary, research into the causes of the slowdown has been enabled by a large body of prior research, and represents an important and continuing scientific effort to quantify the climate signals associated with internal decadal variability, natural external forcing and anthropogenic factors.

________________________________

Clarify the process …

The heat was moved into the oceans where ~90% of our climate system’s heat resides, thus it was absorbed into the global climate system - even if not registering in the GMST estimate.

Sunday, March 12, 2017

In my decades long experience dialoging with climate science “skeptics" they consistently respond to reasoned critique of their arguments by sidetracking the discussion with personal attacks intent on making their 'opponents' seem as detestable as possible thus making any facts irrelevant, as Zoe so ably demonstrated in the last post.

Poptech at “populartechnology-net” provided a text book example last year and since he seems to be slinking around the internet peddling his fable again, I figure I’ll get personal myself and share the response which separates Poptech’s fabrications from the facts.

Besides, it fits right in with the pathetic John Bates’ Affair - John’s MO is the same, malicious manipulation and omission of facts, spin the narrative away from the matter at hand and aim for character assassination.

__________________________________________________ORIGINALLY POSTED FEBRUARY 2nd 2016 under the title: "Lord of the Flies* (#8 Poptech's Truth).

I thought I could avoid Anthony Watts and Andrew 'Poptech's' attack piece on me, figuring I'd get to it later. But my old pal AL (a debate mate from this past November 23 to December 13th in the "debating sock-puppet" series.) just couldn't resist rubbing it in my face, and since his link went to Poptech's post, I figured, OK in for a nickel, in for a dollar.

Oh boy, talk about desperation to dig up shit, well they dug and they dug and oh the facts and links they've unearthed. But, even more impressive than what they unearthed - is the vindictive theatrical spin they put on everything.

As it turns out I’m not ready for John Bates just yet. Still wrestling with Fyfe 2016, I realize I need to write a summary, sort of an elevator pitch for very busy scientists.

For now I thought I’d share this recent and all too typical “dialogue” with a Republican sort of climate science “skeptic” as an example of what climate science communicators are up against. This comes from a single YouTube comments thread and is intended for the curious student of the rhetorical tactics of denial - here's a case study in stonewalling.

RECOMMENDED WEBSITES

11/29/2016 I started this blog to debate climate science contrarians, I've done my part, they, the intellectual cowards for their part have run off and hide within their hermetically sealed echo chambers, safe to continue broadcasting more stupidity mixed with anger and hostility rather than constructive learning.

Now this horrendous election. Its changed everything and this blog, not sure where it's going, eventually I need to start another one, one less intent on futility reaching out for what ain't there and more focused on presenting a different perspective for its own sake, and to hell with the rest of it, it's too heart breaking.

I see Dec 19th as a key date. If there isn't serious focused engagement of the public in numbers that surprise everyone, well the oligarch will have their way with us.

Americans need to let Trump know from the gitgo, we do not approve of his con job and he better not get too crazy because he's earned zero good faith or honeymoon considerations. We shall see.

{edited 12/11/2014}

I know there are too many typos, what can I say, eyes aren't what they were, I get rushed, and always did have a thing with transposing…{well, I also hated high school "english" classes... bad call that one.}. Doing the best I can with what I got. Embarrassing though it is, it's better than doing nothing. Besides, it's the issues and reasoning that we should be worrying about.

Though I'm in my own little world here, I'm also constantly learning and evolving and do get occasional feedback and when I reread stuff and find errors or omissions or garbage, I fix it. If it's major I'll acknowledge it with an 'edited' note, minor stuff I don't bother.

~ ~ ~

I hardly keep track of Anthony's latest antics (besides, with Sou on the job why bother - can't beat her insights). It's just me over here and I have more important things to do with my precious hours - still now that Anthony's luster has been wearing thin he's put his energy into discovering and honing new fresh faces to carry on the public show of the Republican/Libertarian strategic attack on science.

He seems to have transitioned into a ring-leader, perhaps mentor/coach would be better, producer? At least that's how Mr. Steele and his antics of the past year has gotten me to think about it. So in that regard this blog remains about WUWT's brand of thinking and logic and my struggle to understand the anatomy of the fraud they've perpetrated against mankind. {December 2014}

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ok, now some recommended websites:

This blog was started in April 2013 and is written by an actual scientist so it has a refreshingly serious objective air to it, plus he does a good clear job of explaining complex issues.

Tamino, an acknowledged statistical/mathematical expert of the highest order, at Open Mind also does an excellent job of holding Anthony’s feet to the fire with clearly explained facts and math. Check it out:http://tamino.wordpress.com~ ~ ~

And of course, there is the excellent, most up to date internet depository of climate studies and information for the non-expert public.

Then there's RealClimate.org the scientist's commentary site. Run by working climate scientists intended to help the interested public and journalists sort through the complexities of the climatology. They provide "quick response to developing stories and provide the context" that is too often missing from public media's depiction. {But, you better be serious and have some real science education/understanding under your belt if you want to keep up.}

I remember back in da day, good websites/blogs were few and far between. But over the past years that's been changing to the point that it's impossible to keep up with them all. Here's an incomplete, and long overdue addition to my above list: